Forget about cameras for a while and dive into the dawn of photography! At SAMK’s Lensless summer workshop you can make photogenic drawings like Talbot did, mono and multicolour images with plant juices like Herschel, or use outdated b&w photo papers to produce lumen prints in glorious colours. All you need is a pinch of salt, some silver and iron, and a lot of sunshine!

You will learn about the birth of photography, photogenic drawing, salted paper, anthotype, cyanotype, photograms and lumen printing. The working days will be from Thursday to Sunday (09.00 to 15.30), August 6 – 9, at the Art School Campus, Paasikivenkatu 24, Kankaanp√§√§, Finland. The course includes both lectures and practical work. The instructor is Jalo Porkkala, photographer and researcher who uses historical and alternative processes in his work.

This year Vedos will be studying the Wet Plate Collodion and Daguerreotype processes. Also, a book about alternative photographic processes will be published in Finnish.

Since I am working alone on this project now, and for only a part of my working time, I prefer not to update this blog regularly for the time being. This site will stay online, and some supplementary material, like downloadable correction curves for digital negatives, will be available later.

There is a new Facebook page where the work of Vedos and many other artists can be seen and their work commented. Anyone having a Facebook account can post to that page. The conversation¬†and works of art relate to the Wet Plate Collodion and Daguerreotype mostly. You can support the page by liking it.¬†Hope to see you there!

With a special toning technique called Silver Plating it is possible to convert a normal black and white print to a highly reflective mirror silver finish. There is a commercial product called Halo-Chrome by Rockland Colloid to produce silver plating, or you can mix your own toner.

Ilford MG IV RC paper toned with Halo-Chrome toner.

When viewing the print, colours may change and parts of the image may appear as positive or negative. The viewer will get a strong impression of a Daguerreotype — we nicknamed this the “Poor Man’s Daguerreotype” technique. The look of this faux Daguerreotype can’t be reproduced on the web or printed media — you really need to see the real thing to appreciate it!

I got a few decent bromoil brushes recently, and decided to have one more go at bromoil printing. Many people with whom I have discussed the bromoil can’t see the point in it… why bleach away the print and try to get it back with messy inks? Again, this is one of those things to be appreciated only when you are holding a finished print in your hand — the electronic media can reproduce only part of the viewing experience. To be able to feel the “body and soul”, you must get hold of the real thing.

I finally was able to hunt down Gene Laughter’s Bromoil 101 — a working manual for the bromoil printer. The little book really is stuffed with information, it is a valuable guide for a modern bromoilist. I used some of the tips and tricks offered there, e.g. trimming my bromoil brushes and mixing some dry pigments with my inks.

A low contrast bromide print on Bromoprint paper, to be used as a matrix for bromoil.

I also had a chance to use somewhat mysterious Bromoprint paper, ordered from Fotoimpex, Berlin, Germany. I have no info about the manufacturer (maybe Adox? — at least they have a paper called that too), it came in a blank package with no sigle word on it… Anyway it should be a non supercoted paper, and it did produce nice prints and was easy to ink.

A soaking and inking test on Bromoprint paper. The matrix was soaked for 5, 10 and 15 minutes, and then made a quick initial inking on each of the test strips. Soaking of 8 minutes was chosen as the final time.